Chapter Text
Lily Potter hated working the desk.
Some nights, she hated it because nothing ever happened. An array of fancy gizmos lined the desk, each spelled to react to certain dangers -- the one on the far left, for example, whistled sharply whenever anyone tried to apparate into the Ministry, and another that looked like a bouquet of metallic flowers wilted in the presence of glamours and illusions. Working the desk meant sitting there, on “alert,” while exactly none of those gizmos did anything at all.
But then, some nights she hated it because something did happen. More than once she’d been startled out of her boredom by the loud, rattling ka-chunka of the center gizmo, which went off whenever anyone cast any Dark magic anywhere on the British Isles -- anywhere not warded against Ministry detection, at least. Unfortunately this included people who were licensed or carried some other special dispensation, and anyway her duties started and ended with sending a message to whoever was on call that night. Even if it was an actual criminal, it made no difference to her, or to the desk.
Sitting back in the awkward hardwood chair, she groaned and covered her face with the Daily Prophet she was outright too bored to read. The worst part was that she had trapped herself, and Carmichael knew it. Auror Carmichael was second-in-command of Wizarding Britain’s Aurors, and he was in charge of scheduling and deployment. He was the one who kept putting her down for desk duty, and the only person who could make him stop was the actual Head of the Auror Department, and Lily refused to go crawling to her father for help. Especially over something so stupid.
Tossing the Prophet away, she stood and stretched, cursing the stupid chair she had to sit in. It was too small, inflexible, and heavy; one night she’d put a cushioning charm on it only to find herself written up in the morning for “sleeping on duty.” Goddamn Carmichael.
She didn’t know for sure what his problem with her was, but she had a pretty good guess. He was old enough to remember the Dark Wars -- the collective term for the years the Dark Lord Voldemort had been active, in mostly the 1970s and ‘90s. Like many of his generation, he had something of a love-fear relationship with the hero who had ended the Dark Wars, Harry Potter, who of course was now his boss. Love, because Harry had defeated Voldemort… and fear, because he had defeated Voldemort, and nobody understood how.
There was a very persistent rumor that Harry Potter was a Dark Wizard of terrible power who was merely biding his time before making his true intentions known. Nobody would say so to his face, of course, and his thirty-odd years of service as an Auror had earned him true respect from the people who mattered, but that didn’t exactly stop the backroom gossip.
And his daughter, who had taken three seconds before the Sorting Hat put her in Slytherin? Who had deliberately earned an Outstanding in every OWL and NEWT taken by either of her elder brothers? Who graduated from Auror training with better scores than her father?
None of those things had been particularly hard -- James, for example, had taken barely any NEWTs at all, being set on his own goal of following their mother into professional Quidditch. And, frankly, Harry Potter had never been great at academics, and his Auror Qualifying Exams showed it. But it was the principle of the thing -- why she had done it. And why people cared.
And so here she sat, consigned to the desk more nights than not, where nothing ever happened even when something happened.
A small whirr distracted her -- on the corner of the desk, a minor Sneakoscope puttered around for a few spins, then fell still again. Lily stared at it, wondering if her own discontent had set it off. Maybe best not to note that one in the log, then.
She sat back down and glanced over at the one gizmo on the desk she hated more than any other -- the clock. It claimed she had five more hours until the end of her shift. She thought this was very unlikely, but not even Carmichael would stoop so low as to tamper with the desk clock just to torture her more.
At least, she hoped not.
A sense of peace and joy interrupted her sulking. She sat up straight and looked around for what must surely be an incoming Patronus -- yes, there. A glowing white owl swooped in and perched weightlessly on the errant Sneakoscope. It looked at her, tilted its head, and spoke in her brother Al’s voice: “Intruders in the Department. Red robes, like a uniform. What’s going on up there?”
Al Potter was the most unassuming of the Potter siblings, especially in comparison to the braggadocious celebrity that was James, but he had taken his quiet curiosity straight into a career as an Unspeakable. When he mentioned the Department, he meant of Mysteries.
But that meant there were intruders in the Department of Mysteries, and none of her gizmos had noticed a thing.
She waved her wand over the desk and muttered a diagnostic charm. In an ideal world, a deafening cacophony would have filled the room as every single gizmo went off at once. Instead, none of them so much as twitched. Well, that settled that -- she would trust her brother over demonstrably non-responsive sensors and alarms. She didn’t know why they weren’t working, but that was no longer her problem. It could be Carmichael’s problem in the morning. She had an actual job to do.
Her first responsibility, as the Auror Desk, was to alert the Auror On-Call of the emergency. This she did by picking up a handbell, tapping it with her wand, and ringing it furiously. The bell was paired to an identical bell sitting in the on-call lounge, and was how she got to demand their attention when it was really important. She’d never gotten to ring the bell before -- they had gentler methods for matters of lower priority. It was pretty fun.
The ringing cut off abruptly when someone on the other end silenced theirs. A moment later, a rough, half-awake voice spoke in her ear. “Desk, this is Zabini. What’s the matter?”
Lily nodded to herself. Auror Zabini was four years her senior, and hardly the friendliest man in the corps, but he was competent. “Intruders in the Department of Mysteries,” she reported. “They’ve bypassed or disabled the wards here. I’ll meet you on-site.”
There was a long pause before Zabini came back with, “Understood, Potter.” She hadn’t waited. She was already most of the way down the hall towards the lifts.
One was sitting there with its doors open, which was lucky. She careened in, caught herself, and snapped out the emergency override password: “Cannon cup counterfeit. Department of Mysteries!”
The lift doors slid closed, and then the lift dropped into a near free-fall for a couple of seconds. When it jerked to a stop, she had already arrived at the Department of Mysteries. As the doors slid open, she recovered her balance, looked out, and froze.
On the other side of the doors, three wizards in unfamiliar deep-red robes stared back at her for a long, silent heartbeat before bounding into action. All three sent minor curses in her direction, meant to keep her pinned down in the lift, and hurried for the door into the Department hub.
Lily just grinned. If they wanted to open hostilities with an Auror, well, they’d sealed their own fate.
Not even bothering to deflect, she ducked under the first incoming curses and ran forward at the retreating intruders. They continued to pelt her with nuisance spells, so she held up her left hand, palm out, and cast a protego -- a simple shield, but more than capable of handling the nonsense they were throwing at her.
They made it to the door before she could do much else. Pushing through, they slammed it shut behind them, as if that would buy them any time -- still charging forward, Lily stabbed her wand forward, twisted it, and snapped it off to the left, and the door sprang back open.
However, when she passed through into what she thought of as the spinning room, there were no red robes in sight. “Homenum revelio,” she whispered, then growled to herself when she felt her magic fizzle. Of course the Department of Mysteries would be warded against detection spells.
Keeping her guard up, eyes and wand swiveling around the room as she walked, she crossed the circular room to the other side, picking an unmarked door essentially at random. For all that it was the spinning room, it hadn’t actually done any spinning yet, but she certainly wouldn’t complain.
Just before she reached her chosen door, she caught movement in the corner of her eye. Immediately she rolled away and back, and not a moment too soon -- a powerful Reductor curse flashed through where she’d been standing and hit the floor, throwing up dust and shrapnel and leaving a small crater.
Lily pointed her wand. “Stupefy.” She didn’t expect it to hit, especially since she’d said it out loud, but it bought her the time to stand back up and ready herself for a real duel. Her apparent opponent seemed perfectly content to give her that time, as he casually batted away her stunner but otherwise merely stood and waited.
He was wearing one of those red robes too, but he wasn’t one of the first three she’d chased into the spinning room. He was distinctly larger -- not outside human norms or anything, but she eyeballed him at well over six feet, with broad shoulders and, from what she could tell under his robes, a muscular build.
He tilted his head at her in a mockery of formal bow, then lifted his wand and bellowed, “Fragor!” The pale yellow of a Bludgeoning Hex shot towards her, but she slid to the side and let it impact on the far wall. This guy was an unknown, and until she figured out what kind of power he could put behind his spells, it was safer to dodge than to shield.
She stuck to standard Auror tactics to start, giving him three more stunners in a tight triangle that should punch through basic shields. His chosen shield was anything but basic; he conjured a shiny, magical mirror that reflected her stunners back at her. Unfortunately for him, she wasn’t anywhere near the same place anymore, staying on the move even as she cast “Incarcerous,” followed immediately by a silent fragor of her own. He easily blocked the incarcerous, but he hadn’t expected the Bludgeoning Hex; it clipped him on the shoulder and blew him back, spinning through the air until he hit the door to who knew which section of the Department.
Her follow-up stupefy hit him in the chest, and he slumped to the side.
Lily blinked, surprised. She hadn’t actually expected that to hit -- she’d kind of assumed her opponent was better than that. Well, no matter. A couple flicks of her wand had him tied up and propped against the wall, and she got her first chance to really examine his robe. It was a deep burgundy on the whole, with black trims, and the arms had silver embroidery that traveled up from the wrists like veins. It had a hood, but none of the men she’d seen so far had been wearing it up.
It wasn’t a design she was familiar with, but it wasn’t like “Fashion Design of Dark Cabals” was part of Auror training. Maybe one of her more veteran teammates would recognize it.
Shaking her head, she stepped over to the closest door, because it was as good as any. Part of her hoped she was walking into another group of red-robes, because she’d gotten all excited for a real fight, and it had ended in like five seconds. She was itching for an excuse to stretch her wings a bit, figuratively speaking.
Unfortunately -- or fortunately, rather -- the door instead took her into a quiet, shadowy room that contained only one person. Al Potter, Lily’s older brother, stepped out from a dark corner with relief, shimmering with a dropped Disillusionment Charm.
“There you are, Lily,” he said, lowering his wand. “I was wondering what was taking so long.”
Of the three Potter siblings, Al looked the most like their father, Harry. He stood with similar stature, he had the trademark unruly black hair, and he was the only one to inherit their grandmother’s bright green eyes. Despite the secrecy surrounding his work as an Unspeakable, he would probably be the easiest to impersonate, even without Polyjuice.
So, Lily kept her wand trained on him. “Password,” she demanded.
Al groaned and rubbed his face with one hand. They all had words assigned to them by Harry when they were children -- phrases that only they and their immediate family knew, a way to verify identity just in case it ever came up. But Lily was probably the only one of them who’d actually thought about those old passwords in years.
After ten or fifteen seconds of wracking his brain, Al finally said, “Lemon drops. Merlin, it’s been a while…”
Lily nodded, and relaxed. “Al, what’s going on? Who are these guys?”
“I wish I knew,” Al said. “I’m not even supposed to be here this late.”
“Just tell me what’s happened so far,” Lily said, casting a silent lumos and using it to peer around the room. It looked like a small lab, with a long table in the middle covered in loose parchment and tightly-sealed jars. For her first real peek into the interior workings of the Department of Mysteries, it was fairly disappointing.
“Well, I… might have fallen asleep over a report I was writing,” Al said. “I woke up when I heard the walls spinning. They only do that when there are intruders, so I knew there was trouble.”
“You mentioned the red robes in your Patronus,” Lily reminded him.
He nodded. “A couple of them came in here and looked around. They didn’t find whatever they were looking for, so they left. They didn’t find me, either.” He shrugged. “So I sent that off to you and kept hidden, just in case.”
“I don’t suppose you overheard them talking about their goal or anything?” Lily was satisfied now that there was nothing fancy or unusual hidden in the room, so she could believe that the red-robes had left it quickly. Al answered her question by shaking his head, and Lily sighed. “So we don’t know how many of them there are, and we don’t know what they want.” Thinking of Auror Zabini, she continued, “The others should be here by now… I’ll get you to the lifts so we can sort this out.”
Al nodded and brandished his wand. He was no Auror, but he was still a Potter, and none of them were exactly pushovers in a fight.
When they left the lab and re-entered the hub, it was completely empty. Even the guy she’d stunned and tied up was gone. There was still no sign of Zabini or any other Aurors, either. Deeply bothered by this, Lily kept her wand up and at the ready as they began to cross the room, Al staying close to her back.
About halfway across the room, there was the sudden sound of at least a dozen voices speaking different incantations, and in an instant a multitude of spells began to streak in from around the edge of the room -- too many to count or identity but it was clear the red-robes had them surrounded.
She reacted instantly, stabbing her wand straight up in the air then sweeping it down at an outward angle to waist-height, at the same time reaching back with her left hand to pull Al in close. “Pyramis Occlidus,” she cried, louder than perhaps necessary, but she was after all pressed for time -- just before the first incoming curses arrived at the center of the room, a translucent pyramid of protective magical force shimmered into being, covering both Lily and her brother entirely, though they had to crouch down a bit to fit.
As the incoming spells hit the angled shield, they were deflected up at the ceiling. Some of them caused damage up there, but Lily spared only a quick glance to make sure nothing was going to fall on top of them. Pyramis Occlidus was one of the best options for 360-degree coverage from spells, but it had its drawbacks, in particular the fact that it did nothing to protect from physical dangers like rocks falling onto your head.
It also prevented magic from going in either direction, in or out, so she would have to drop it before they could fight back. She could have chosen to maintain the shield and bunker down instead, but she doubted it would be long before one of their mysterious assailants used a curse that would break through -- or even maybe the Killing Curse, which of course no magical shield could block. They’d be sitting ducks.
So, as soon as that first volley was over, she dropped the shield and stood up straight. “Back to back,” she called over her shoulder, and took up a defensive stance, eyes flicking around for attackers she still couldn’t see.
“Right,” Al called back with blatantly false bravado. She felt him settle into position.
They were surrounded and exposed, and at something of a massive disadvantage -- they would have to rely on shields and deflections to protect them, rather than the altogether preferable strategy of dodging, simply because they had to protect each other. If Lily dodged a stunner, it would just hit Al in the back, and then where would she be? But she'd called for that strategy anyway, because she didn't want to leave her older brother exposed. It was just a bad situation to be in, all around.
She used her wand to rapidly draw a dispersal sigil in mid-air, then focused her magic and cast through it -- “Visus Coactus.” There was a bright flash of light, and five red-robes stumbled back, their invisibility stripped from them. That wouldn’t be all of them, but it was a start. It was also all she had time for before they started in with the curses again, and she had to focus on not getting hit. As useful as sigils were, she just wasn’t fast enough with them to use them in the middle of a duel, much less this particular mess.
The red-robes seemed more disorganized now, casting individually with no real pattern. Probably their one big trick had been their coordinated opening volley, and now they were just trying to wear her down with a torrent of minor curses and hexes. None of their spells would do anything terrible, but she certainly couldn’t afford to let herself get hit by any and still hope to win the fight. Given enough time, their strategy might even work -- with five opponents she could see and an unknown number she could not, she only rarely had the opportunity to counterattack, at least without leaving herself unacceptably open.
Plus, given the circumstances, she was forced to rely only on the strongest shields that took the most power to cast, because she simply didn’t have time to tailor her shields for each incoming spell. It was draining, and there was a chance she would run out of stamina before they all did. She was already getting a headache just from the constant flashes of multi-colored light as dozens of different spells came flying towards her.
But, she wouldn’t have to keep it up forever -- Zabini’s team would be by any second, and then the tides would turn in a big way. He should have been there already, actually. She wondered what was holding him up.
She heard Al grunt in surprise, then saw him land awkwardly on his side, clutching his ribs. She took the opportunity to duck, and recognized only as they passed overhead that the most recent spells from the red-robes were much more dangerous than schoolyard hexes. Well -- if they were going to escalate, she would too.
Moving to stand over Al, she whipped her wand around in a big circle and summoned a ring of fire. It expanded steadily outwards, trapping the red-robes against the walls, and buying her a few moments to examine her brother.
“I’m okay,” Al coughed from beneath her, and sat up. She knelt down quickly, taking in the fact that he was visibly unharmed -- whatever had hit him had not done any real physical damage. She didn’t have time for a more detailed diagnosis, so she just held out her arm to help him back to his feet.
Then she spun around and transfigured her fire into ice. Those red-robes who were smart enough to cast Flame-Freezing charms of their own to render the fire harmless, but stupid enough to continue standing in it -- they were all trapped instantly. She couldn’t exactly count invisible bodies, but she thought she’d gotten a fair few of them with that trick. She even managed to stun a couple who turned to help their comrades before the battle restarted in earnest.
She grinned a bit as she deflected a Bone-Breaker Hex back towards its caster. This was a much more manageable number of enemies to be dealing with. She even dropped a few more with spells woven in between her near-continuous shield casts. Despite their superior numbers, Lily knew she could beat these mysterious dark wizards now, if she had enough time.
Then Al let another curse slip through his defenses. He stumbled back, bumping hard into Lily, who was barely able to adjust in time to deflect a Conjunctivitis. Then a second spell followed and hit her in the back -- just a Bludgeoning Hex, she registered dimly as she slammed forward onto her face, the worst it could do was break her spine and it didn’t feel like it had -- she rolled over, ready to hop back up to her feet, but found herself stuck to the ground, unable to get up.
Her body wasn’t frozen, she confirmed quickly by struggling, but rather it was like she was glued down. She still had some range of movement, and she took advantage by hitting one of the remaining visible red-robes with a nasty curse that made him feel like his skin was being peeled off. She was rewarded by getting hit with Expelliarmus; unable to defend herself in any way, she felt her wand jerk itself out of her fingers and was just glad they’d chosen that instead of, really, anything else.
Al had stumbled back to his feet at this point. Noticing Lily’s predicament, he hurried over and knelt down. “I recognize this,” he said, and he touched his wand to the ground next to her head. “Dimitti sal-- ”
He stopped casting. He stopped casting because there was a hole in his chest.
One of the red-robes had escalated up to lethal piercing spells, and Al had been too distracted to protect himself.
His blood splattered across her face. He wavered slightly, looking down at himself with an expression of casual surprise, then began to topple.
Lily didn’t have her wand. She stretched out her hand as far as it could go with her arm glued to the floor, took a deep, shuddering breath, and shouted, “Statte!” She felt the magic flow out through her fingers and relaxed back with a gasp. She was better than most at wandless magic, but Statte was no cinch even with a wand.
It was an emergency medical stasis charm. As Al finished falling over, he was frozen in position, his chest still gaping open but it wasn’t hurting him. He wouldn’t bleed out. He wouldn’t do anything. Until the stasis was dispelled, or wore off, and Lily knew from training that she could only maintain it for about an hour in the best conditions…
Her brother needed real medical attention as soon as possible, or he was going to die.
Looking wildly around the room, Lily noticed that the incoming spells had stopped. Instead, the remaining red-robes had tightened into a smaller circle around the two incapacitated Potters, and they were chanting in unison, some long incantation she didn’t recognize.
Getting desperate, she knocked one of them back with a wandless Banishing Charm, but they merely closed ranks again and kept chanting. And before she could try something else, the chanting came to an abrupt stop, and the red-robes all pointed their wands down at her.
She felt herself sinking down, like they had transfigured the floor into goo. She fought to stay up, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t escape -- the last thing she managed before her hands sunk beneath the floor was a hasty Bubble-Head Charm, in the hopes that it would help her breathe once she was submerged in… whatever she was sinking into. She didn’t know how long she could last down there. Hopefully longer than it took to get rescued.
And just where the fuck was Zabini?
And then she was under --
It felt like she was floating in a pool of hot tar for a moment. And then, strangely, turbulence -- she was knocked around, felt herself turn over and over and she tumbled, maybe, through something kind of like a tunnel, before the world went bright and then dark and then she found herself outside, that was, outdoors, and she caught flashes of a clear evening sky, gray slabs of stone, lots of men in black robes, two wizards dueling, their figures obscured by the bright beams of light that seemed to connect their wands --
If Lily was confused by her appearance in this crowd, she was hardly the only one. Woozily, she tried to push herself to her feet, even as chaos descended around her. There was a lot of shouting, but a ringing in her ears prevented her from making out any words. The bright beams of light vanished, and the smaller of the duelists took off running. He looked like a teenaged boy, probably no more than fifteen, and other than some weaving around to avoid some curses he was headed straight for a lump on the ground that looked an awful lot like a dead body.
The other duelist, a tall and imposing man with oddly gray skin, shouted something at the assembled men in black robes. They seemed to pull back, giving Lily a clear path towards the running boy. She started in that direction.
The boy reached the body and clutched it in his arms. It looked like another teenaged boy, but older, closer to adulthood. Once settled, the first boy lifted up his wand, pointed it in her direction, and shouted, “Accio-- ”
And then he noticed her. She didn’t know what she looked like -- didn’t know where she was or why she’d turned up there after sinking into the floor of the Department of Mysteries, didn’t know what that kind of travel may have done to her appearance -- but he froze in total shock.
In the dim light, he looked a lot like Al, and Lily wondered if this was some kind of nightmare as punishment for letting him get hurt.
And then a bolt of green light shot across her vision and struck him even as some ornate trophy cup sailed in from behind her. He slumped over bonelessly as the cup flew through where his hands had been and clattered to the earth beyond him.
There was a moment of stillness. Then the gray-looking wizard, who had cast the Killing Curse, started laughing. The assorted wizards in black started laughing with him.
She reached the boys. She knelt down and gathered them both in her arms. She didn’t really understand what was going on, but one of them was maybe a young Al? And the wizards in black were clearly the bad guys.
She wished her ears would stop ringing. She wished she didn’t feel so dizzy.
The gray wizard was staring at her now. Saying something. She couldn’t understand it anyway. He raised his wand -- was he about to kill her, too?
The boy had wanted the cup, she thought. She may as well let him hold it in their tableau of death. So she reached to the side and summoned it.
A furious look crossed the gray wizard’s face before the cup smacked solidly into her hand. She was not expecting it to be a Portkey. As she felt the hook-like sensation jerking her away, she would have dropped the cup in surprise, if it had been possible to do so.
They emerged on a cool, grassy lawn amid so much noise. She curled over the two dead boys, partly to protect them -- from what? -- partly just to get away. The Portkey had done her no favors after her previous trauma, and now she was being overwhelmed by some terrible combination of music, cheering, and screams. At least her hearing was returning, but she almost preferred the ringing to whatever nonsense was going on -- it sounded almost like hundreds of people were present --
And then a stunning spell hit her where she lay, and she slipped into the quiet black.
When she was revived, Lily felt much better. She was bound, sitting in a chair, facing a blank wall, her entire body ached, and she could tell that she had been administered Veritaserum, but despite all of that, she felt almost… floaty. She was pretty happy, actually!
She heard the shuffle of feet behind her. Two people, she guessed. She was glad for the company, and hoped she could help them in some way.
One spoke. “Can you hear me?” His voice was old, but not frail. Stern.
“Yes,” she answered. Why would she not?
Same voice. “Do you know where you are?”
She looked around. It really did seem to be a featureless wall, but if she turned as far as she could she just managed to see the edge of… a desk, maybe? “No,” she said.
“You are at Hogwarts,” the voice said. “Are you familiar?”
What an odd question. But she trusted that the old man was telling the truth. “Of course. I went here.” She tried to remember where she’d been just prior -- she could remember heading down into the Department of Mysteries, but after that… a fight in the hub? Wizards in black standing among gravestones?
She was distracted by another question. “What is your name?”
“Lily Potter,” she answered, and did that ever get a reaction. While she waited patiently, the two men behind her had a rapid discussion behind what she guessed was a Muffliato privacy shield. Then it dropped, and the voice spoke to her again.
“Where did you acquire the Auror robes you’re wearing?”
“They’re mine,” Lily said. “They were issued to me. Madam Malkin’s has the contract with the Ministry, I think, but I’m not really sure.”
“You are an Auror?”
“Yes.” It was still the old man asking questions. The second presence behind her hadn’t spoken where she could hear. She hadn’t even figured out the first voice yet. It didn’t sound like any of the professors she remembered. “My first year out of training,” she admitted, in case they found it helpful.
“What was your name when you attended Hogwarts?”
“Lily Potter,” she said again. “I haven’t changed my name.”
There was a moment of quiet. Then, footsteps, as the two men both walked around from the back to stand in front of her.
The men were very distinct. One was an old man with long, white hair and beard, half-moon spectacles perched on a crooked nose, and rather gaudy robes. The other had black, greasy hair and a scowl, and his robes were nondescript.
She recognized them both.
“Do you know who I am?” the old man asked.
“No,” Lily said, “but you’re dressed as Albus Dumbledore.”
The two men shared a look. “What do you think, Severus?” pseudo-Dumbledore asked his companion, apparently content to hold this conversation in front of her.
“She is not Lily,” the other man said flatly. “I admit she bears a certain resemblance, but Lily’s hair was not as orange, and obviously her eyes--”
“Of course, Severus,” pseudo-Dumbledore said.
“What’s wrong with my eyes?” Lily interrupted. “Did something happen to them?” She craned her neck around, hoping there was a mirror she hadn’t noticed she could use to see herself.
“Your eyes are not green,” pseudo-Snape said in his same flat tone.
“Oh,” Lily said, relaxing, “of course not.” But then she thought of a woman named Lily Potter who did have green eyes, and she eyed the men in front of her suspiciously, both looking like people she knew had died long before she was even born. Her mind was too fuzzy at the moment for genuine shock or horror, but she faintly thought that those were what she should have been feeling.
Pseudo-Dumbledore seemed to figure something out at the same time, because he steepled his fingers together and asked, “Miss Potter, what is your date of birth?”
“Third of May, two thousand eight,” she answered promptly, still bound by the truth-serum.
Pseudo-Dumbledore settled back on his heels with the expression of someone who was glad to have been proven right. Pseudo-Snape, however, looked thunderous.
“She is mocking us,” he said, turning to his companion. “She is clearly resisting the Veritaserum in some way. If you would permit me--”
“That will not be necessary,” the old wizard interrupted firmly. He looked back to Lily. “Miss Potter,” he said, “the current date is the twenty-fifth of June, nineteen ninety five.” He peered at her over the tops of his spectacles. “Do you believe me?”
There was a pause as Lily’s head spun. “Well, yes, actually,” she said, the truth serum forcing her to admit it, and in the process cementing it in her mind, turning suspicion to accepted fact. Yes, she was in the past somehow.
Wasn’t that crazy? She almost giggled, but caught herself in time. She blamed it on whatever potions were in her system. She guessed at least a Calming Draught, but probably something else, too, to make her so cooperative. Plus, of course, the Veritaserum.
“You said I was dressed like Albus Dumbledore,” Dumbledore said. “I assure you I am he after all. How did you know what I look like?”
“I’ve seen your portrait,” Lily answered. “In the Headmaster’s office. Your portrait is there.” She nodded her head in the direction of Snape. “His too.”
“How fascinating,” Dumbledore said with the faint hint of a twinkle in his eye. Snape studiously looked away, his scowl deeper than ever. “And, Miss Potter, do you know how you have come to find yourself in what you would consider the past?”
Lily shook her head. “I honestly have no idea. Last I remember I was in the Department of Mysteries. Then maybe something about a graveyard? It’s all a blur.”
“Ah yes,” Dumbledore said, now far less amused. “The graveyard.” He leaned forward slightly. “Miss Potter, I would very much like to know what you saw in the graveyard. Would you permit me to draw the memory out so we can view it together?”
Lily hesitated, but the Veritaserum compelled her to answer-- “Sure, go ahead.”
Dumbledore nodded, then bent over more so he could look her directly in the eyes.
“What, right now?” Lily managed weakly, and then the next moment, she was back in the graveyard.
The experience was similar to viewing a Pensieve memory, but instead of an objective third-person perspective, she was back in her own head, looking through her own eyes. She could sense the pain and disorientation she’d been feeling at the time, but it didn’t affect her “current” self, the Lily who was now watching.
In the memory, she’d just been popped out of whatever it was that had transported her from the floor of the Department of Mysteries to this unfamiliar cemetery. As her past self noticed the duelling wizards, the weight of the situation she was witnessing came bearing down on her. At least, if she was as far in the past as Dumbledore suggested, it couldn’t be a younger Al she was looking at. It would have to be--
Wait. Was she watching her father? Harry Potter? And was he dueling Voldemort?
“That’s correct, Miss Potter,” Dumbledore’s voice said in her mind, and she would have jumped in shock if she’d been in control of her body. “I have already heard young Mister Potter’s version of events, and I’m afraid you have joined us right at the start of the Dark Wizard Voldemort’s return to power.”
She watched as her appearance disrupted the gathered wizards in black -- Death Eaters, she remembered from History of Magic -- and she noticed this time that they were all wearing white masks, as well. But the ringing in her ears couldn’t be helped; their voices simply never made it into her memory, and so could not be retrieved.
She watched as the young Harry dodged his way over to the other boy. “Cedric Diggory,” Dumbledore’s voice informed her. “A tragic loss.” Lily shrugged mentally; the name meant nothing to her. Harry grabbed Cedric, turned, summoned the cup, and then saw her as she staggered towards him.
And then Voldemort’s Killing Curse struck him, and Lily watched him fall, again, aghast and confused.
“I thought so,” Dumbledore’s voice murmured.
She was no less confused by the time the memory reached its conclusion, Lily summoning the cup and the three of them whirling away to the grass. Since she was still limited to her own perceptions, Lily couldn’t see any better this time where they were, or why it was so loud, though she guessed the cup had taken her to Hogwarts.
And then it was over, and she was sitting, tied to her chair, sweating and breathing heavily like she’d just come out of one of her old Physical Conditioning classes. Dumbledore was looking pensive. Snape still wasn’t looking at her.
“I do believe that confirms my theory,” Dumbledore said softly.
“Is he really dead?” Lily demanded. “You just said you’d heard ‘his version’ -- didn’t he die? ”
“Young Harry is not dead, in fact,” Dumbledore told her, sounding entirely too cheerful. “Something of Voldemort’s own doing inadvertently protected the boy.” He looked at her curiously for a moment, but refrained from asking whatever was on his mind. Instead, he said, “Of course, that will not be the story once we leave this room.”
That got Snape’s attention. “Whatever you’re planning, Albus,” he said, “I do not approve.”
“I would expect no less, Severus,” Dumbledore said with a small smile. “Nevertheless.”
“I don’t understand,” Lily said, which was of course the truth.
“As you may recall from viewing your memory,” Dumbledore said -- what an awkward way to say remember -- “Harry did see you before he was struck down. He suspected you to be a hallucination until the moment he learned that you had also been seen by nearly the entire population of Hogwarts, plus no few representatives of the Ministry of Magic, when he and Cedric returned with you in tow.”
“Sorry,” Lily said, uncertain why but feeling it was appropriate.
“Given the circumstances,” Dumbledore continued, “quite a lot of people believe that Lily Potter-- née Evans, your grandmother-- has returned from the dead.” He face turned oddly calculating. “It is my intention to foster that belief.”
Lily just stared at him. The very idea was absurd -- people didn’t just come back from the dead -- and even her potion-assisted cooperation could only stretch so far. He looked like he was expecting a response, though, so she had to say something. “But he even told you,” she said, meaning Snape, “I don’t actually look that much like her.”
“You’re close enough, on the whole,” Dumbledore said, unfazed. Glancing at his companion, he added, “There are very few people who would ever notice, much less care about, a slightly incorrect shade of red hair. As for your eyes…” He considered the eyes in question for a moment, then pointed his wand right at them.
Lily felt her eyes burn terribly. She screamed and scrunched them shut, pulling at the bonds tying her to the chair, desperate to get her hands free so she could put more pressure on her eyelids, or maybe to gouge her eyes right out if it would help. Then, suddenly, the burning abated.
She took a few deep breaths before she relaxed even slightly. Slowly, she opened her eyes, but had to blink away a few tears before she could see properly.
Snape was staring at her with an unfathomable expression. Dumbledore just looked pleased.
“What did you do?” she whispered, unable to break through the Calming Draught to scream it at him the way she wanted to.
In answer, he twirled his wand and conjured a mirror, which he held in front of her.
Of course that’s what he’d done.
Her eyes were green.
It was her first chance to look at the rest of herself, too, since the Department of Mysteries. A few unkind descriptions flittered through her head at the look of her sorry state, but ‘banged up’ and ‘a right mess’ seemed the most appropriate. There was a large, visible bruise on her forehead, and a cut on her left cheek; she could remember receiving neither, but now that she knew they were there she could feel them start to throb. Her hair -- too orange to be her grandmother, according to Snape -- was matted and absolutely filthy; it was a wonder the Potions professor could see her hair color at all. Her Auror robes, which she wore with pride, were torn in several places. Oh, and there was blood spattered all over her face and front.
It wasn’t her blood. The memory came back in a rush -- Al, her older brother, kneeling over her to free her from the floor. The piercing curse that got him right through the chest. His blood spurting over her, until she had managed to put him in stasis. Stasis that would do him no good, surrounded alone by the demonstrably malicious red-robes. She had left him to die.
And now she had his green eyes.
She felt the tears coming back, but from a different pain this time. She blinked them away just as furiously.
She looked at the two professors still standing there. One the famous Headmaster of Hogwarts for decades, one of the greatest wizards who ever lived. The Albus for whom Al was named. The other, a future Headmaster of Hogwarts, though from what she could dimly remember, under less than auspicious circumstances. Her brother was his namesake too. How ironic, that they were standing here before her together, when she had so failed to protect him.
Or… she would fail. In thirty-odd years. Her head hurt.
“I’d like to be alone for a while,” she told them, and wondered if the potions in her system were starting to wear off.
To her relief, Dumbledore did not protest. “Take as long as you need,” he said, and the two of them stepped back around her to the exit. There was a murmur, and just before the door clicked shut, she felt her bonds loosen. She could finally pull her hands free.
She just hugged herself and allowed herself to cry.